When I was a travel editor in the ’90s I would write an article every December titled “The Year in Travel.” That was the last decade of carefree travel, and my look back at the previous twelve months was always rich in the amusing and the bizarre. My last “Year in Travel” ran in 2001.
“The Bamiyan Buddha. The World Trade Center. The Mississippi Queen.
“The story of the year – prelude, climax, aftermath – is written in the names of lost tourist landmarks.”
Dave Hyde – who was laid off this week after 36 years at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel – once wrote of running into Don Shula shortly after writing about his recently deceased wife. Shula thanked him for the column and then – as if he were a lineman who had just given a key block – tapped him on the butt and said, “Good job.”
Dave received better treatment from a Hall of Fame coach than he did from his longtime employer.
I watched the CBS Evening News last night to see if there would be any mention of the firing of Scott Pelley from 60 Minutes and, to my surprise, there was a long segment about it. It included excerpts from Pelley’s defiant statement about his dismissal, which has been well-circulated on social media, and a tribute to his long career as a correspondent for the network, with clips of him interviewing presidents and reporting from war zones. It ended with a personal reminiscence from anchor Tony Dokoupil, who closed with a heartfelt message of thanks.
This impressed me because in 2008 I was in a situation somewhat similar to Pelley’s (in a decidedly smaller media domain). I was laid off, not fired, for primarily financial reasons, but philosophical differences with management also played a role. (I wanted a Travel section that entertained and informed readers about the world; the editors had decided that even Travel needed to be “local and useful.”) I was in my mid 50s; Pelley is in his late 60s; and he is much better off financially. But the main difference was that, far from giving me a tribute, the newspaper acted as if I’d never existed, making no mention of my departure in my old section. For people who had been reading me for nearly two decades, I simply disappeared.
The New York Times Book Review used to run biannual roundups of travel books, and often the reviewers would remark on the fact that the books included had nothing to do with vacation. Curiously, they seemed under the impression that travel for travel writers is the same as it is for other people. Sunday, the New York Times Magazine came out with its biannual Voyages issue, which included a story by a writer who took her son to the Bahamas for vacation.
Ron Charles, the former editor of the Washington Post Book World, has a delightful essay on Substack about getting laid off after 20 years doing a job he loved. “Delightful” because, as depressing as the subject is, the piece has moments of humor.
I’ve seen a few pieces by former Post writers, and I’ve read them with sympathy – I too was laid off (after 19 years doing a job I loved) – and envy (I got none of the attention and support that they are getting). I worked for a smaller, much less acclaimed newspaper in Florida, and I didn’t write about books, or sports – I wrote about travel. To most people, even probably some in the newsroom, my layoff simply meant an end to my ridiculously sublime gig of being paid to take vacations. To me, it meant the demise of the section that informed readers about the world. But this was 2008, and I had no Substack to turn to with my thoughts on my dismissal. And of course no media reported on my departure. I simply cleaned out my desk – I was given an afternoon – and filled a shopping cart with the contents, atop which I placed the Green Eyeshade award I had received a few weeks earlier.
Social media yesterday was full of outrage at the Washington Post, which laid off large numbers of people and terminated the book and sports sections. Almost all of the posts I saw were from current or former journalists, many with ties to the Post; almost none were from readers. Which made me wonder: Are journalists the only Americans who care about journalism? Has the public distrust of journalists gotten so bad, or has the profession become so irrelevant in most people’s lives, that the gutting of a great American newspaper makes little difference to the general public? There’s also the possibility that over the last year we’ve all just become inured to the wanton destruction of vital, once-cherished institutions.